Wayne stared with furrowed brow at the office computer screen, typing away.
"Hope you didn't expect to be going anywhere soon", a gargoyle snickers, half-startling the hunched over werewolf. With that, the gargoyle dumped a tall stack of papers onto Wayne small cubicle desk, knocking over of the few pictures by the side of his keyboard off the desk.
"Careful there", Wayne growled as he started to reach over to pick up the picture frame, and we interrupted again by the ringing of his work phone.
He'd been expecting it to be a phone call from his house. He wasn't expecting it to be the grating loud voice of Frank's wife Eunice. A she yelled at him that his wife was in a labor and he should be dropping everything to be with her, he tried to get a word with the phone farther and farther from his ear. She seemed to respond to the distancing of his voice but talking louder, especially as he wasn't showing the same ecstatic concern as her by raising his own loud in response. She was blaring so, it would have been pointless, if not cause to catch hell later from his co-workers, to put her on speaker.
Eunice eventually did stop talking, maybe due to Wayne just sitting there and not saying anything, or maybe Wanda made her stop. Either way, Wayne was given a moment to respond uninterrupted. The first thing that came to mind was telling her it was his nose, not his ears, that didn't work, but instead he sighed and calmly said, "Thank you, Eunice. Thanks for letting me know Wanda's having the kids. I'm sure she's in capable hands, now if you could please let me speak to her, that'd be great."
Once Wayne heard his sweet wife's panting voice, he continued, "Hey there, hon… I love you, too. Don't let those kids get the best of you, and I'll see you soon enough." He paused momentarily to assess the stack of papers again and then, while taking a couple off the top, he stated, "Know I'll be thinking about you and will be trying to get there as soon as possible." Wayne had seem Wanda in enough degrees of pregness to know unspokenly that she was going to have triples, which lowered the odds to slim, but he still concluded with, "Well, my love. Here's hoping for another girl."
There was a weary chuckle from Wanda before she yipped in contraction, as Wayne hung up the phone. There was no more to say to Wanda, and he didn't want to say any more to Eunice.
Wayne scans over the papers in his hands, tells Wanda again that he loves her, and then sets the forms down to hang up the phone. Then he carefully moves the stack to the side, and retrieves the simply framed picture on the floor. Holding it in his hands, he slowly brushed it off with his thumb pads before setting it next to the monitor, and focuses again on the numbers and lines on the computer screen.
"It's going to be another long work day, and possibly night, too", Wayne stated with a sigh no one in particular.
Outside of the monitor, keyboard, mouse pad, and forms area, there was space enough on his desk for three pictures. One was a year or so old one of him with Winnie proudly on his shoulder, several of his other cubs out of view gnawing on his legs, taken by one of his elder kids. The second was a half-decade old group photo of Wanda heavy with litter, him, and the then current mod of brood taken in the front yard of the cave by Frank. The last one, the one that had fallen, was a high school prom picture of Wanda and him taken by his father.
In it, unbeknownst to Wayne or either one of their families at the time of the shot, Wanda has only the slightest inkling of a baby bump showing through her form-fitting gown that otherwise accentuates the slight curves of her slinky form. Standing proud over her, his broad shoulders, muscular arms, and hulking chest practically busting out of his suit blouse, Wayne looks every bit the jock that he'd been after school. Math and numbers were his real passion, and Wanda had been a highly skillful varsity cheerleader turned tutee, that due to a combination of heat, persistence, and surprising talent on her part, and inexperience and cheap protection on his part, had resulted in a post-graduate present of five squirmy cubs.
If he'd gotten that phone call back then, he would have bolted out of his seat and loped all the way across town from work to the hospital to be at his then girlfriend's side. That hadn't been necessary as he'd gone as far as taking leave without pay and risked being laid off in his absence to stay at her side during the final month to a week after her release from the hospital, proudly carrying Wanda out in his arms. Despite her high fertility, Wanda didn't have what you'd call child-bear hips, and pushing out the pups tended to do a number on her nethers. As such, she tended to be a bit tender until her werewolf regeneration did its full effect.
Now Wanda had her eldest litter and Eunice to nurse her to health, but back then it was Wayne that was her everything.
There was something there at the time, but they hadn't Zinged yet. It would actually be quite a while before they truly Zinged. Maybe it was guilt for knocking her up and fear of her family's wrath. At first he'd feared Wanda's wrath or dejection for having her figure and dreams ruined and being burdened with cubs, but she seemed to be in awe of having lives inside her and only grew closer to him, saying it changed nothing and everything would be okay. Then he feared not being able to support her and her cubs, and he'd have to give up on his own goals, which would further hinder him being able to support her.
The moment he learned Wanda was pregnant with his cubs, he'd applied everywhere he could until he'd found temp jobs filing paperwork and doing janitorial work. He figured if he tried hard enough, one of them would make him permanent, then he'd move up, and in a few years, he really would be able to comfortably support his family-to-be.
His jobs did replace him in his absence, but luckily Wanda's family had enough faith in him that they stated their willingness to care for Wanda and her cubs while both their families paid Wayne's tuition to a reputable business university. Also luckily, Wayne had the smarts and drive to make it through an accelerated course at said university with high marks, not that it would ever end up helping him go up the corporate ladder, but at least he was able to return to Wanda with his head held high.
Nodding solemnly to the photo, Wayne put the forms in front of him into the done pile and then pulled another sheet off the stack of forms.